Boys of the Lough

Here are some photos from the Boys of the Lough performance at the 2007 Dublin Irish Festival.

The photo above is from flute and whistle player Cathal McConnell's excellent, solo whistle rendition of Harvest Home. He played the tune three times, with increasingly complex variations. I recorded his performance of this tune and will post the recording if I can get his permission to do so. When he received a well-deserved cheer after he finished the tune, one of the other band members said, "You've just made an old man very happy!"

Fiddler Kevin Henderson is from Shetland, and brought an interesting musical color to the group. He played a solo set of Shetland fiddle tunes which were quite striking; a bit slower-paced and less driving than the dance tunes which comprised the majority of the group's performance.

2007 Dublin Irish Festival

I've just had a look at the 2007 Dublin Irish Festival entertainment lineup. Tucked in amongst the "Celtic rock," I found some pretty good reasons to attend, including the following out-of-town acts:

• Téada
• The Boys of the Lough
• Eileen Ivers

There are also some local bands I like. My teacher's band, The Kells, who played a great house concert in April will be performing. Occasionally-local Changeling is a husband-and-wife duo featuring the fiddle playing of Deborah Clark Colón. Aisling reformed last year after significant personnel changes; I haven't heard them in their current incarnation, but they were quite good in the past.

An intriguing-sounding group I'm unfamiliar with is the Armagh Rhymers, from, of course, Co. Armagh, who do folk theatre from the mummer tradition.

There's also a great deal of utter dreck on the bill. I'll elect to follow the "if you can't say anything nice about someone, say nothing at all" rule here, and simply write this off as the price of having a festival which can bring good acts in from overseas.

But since the festival generally has at least four stages running concurrently, plus session tents and other stuff, you can generally find something good to hear or see.